


To Keep Out The Dark

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family Fluff, Smut, grandpastiltskin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 01:05:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Candles keep bad dreams away, or so Rumpelstiltskin has always believed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Keep Out The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Rumbelle Secret Santa (RSS) gift for my lovely recipient, onthekarmapaymentplan (on Tumblr). The prompt was ‘candles keep bad dreams away’, and I took it fairly literally! Also angst warning, and warning for smut in the last part.

Baelfire is afraid of pirates.

Rumpelstiltskin can understand that all too well: he’s scared of them too. Every night for the past week - even though it’s been months since Milah was taken, and Bae rendered motherless - Bae has tossed and turned, and wept in his sleep. He screams, sometimes, and then sobs when his father wakes him, and he falls into his waiting arms. Even sleeping in the bed beside Rumpelstiltskin does little to help: still he screams, still he weeps.

Rumpelstiltskin knows he dreams of those shadowy pirates, the ones he saw at the tavern the night before Milah vanished, and of the story Rumpelstiltskin spun about her death. He’d thought it’d be easier to mourn a dead mother than worry for and miss a potentially enslaved one, and he’d kept his own weakness out of the account, but it seemed he’d been wrong. In sparing Baelfire the details, he left the boy’s imagination room for all sorts of atrocities, and it runs riot in his sleep.

“Bae,” Rumpelstiltskin murmurs, “Bae, come on now, wake up son.” Bae stirs in his sleep, whimpering awake and staring sightlessly into the dark for a moment, before settling on the careworn face of his father.

“Papa,” he sobs, “papa, they took mama. What if they come for you next?”

“They won’t, Bae,” Rumpelstiltskin promises, as if he knows, but then what use would pirates have for a lame spinner who can’t even fight for his wife? A beautiful woman in her prime like Milah had uses, even if she couldn’t cook or clean, if one wished to be crass. Rumpelstiltskin cannot imagine any use a pirate could have for him, besides a pincushion or a target for practice. “I promise you, I’m not going anywhere.” ( _And that, at least, he feels he knows for certain, for no power in this world or any other could tear him from his child_ ).

“But I see them, papa,” Bae cries, “I see them every night, I can’t stop!”

Rumpelstiltskin, thinking fast, remembers something from his childhood, a story spun by two very sweet, very tired old spinsters burdened with a child who never stopped crying.

“Hey, hey Bae, look at me,” he whispered, and then reached under the bed on the other side, and pulled out one of the old, cheap beeswax candles they save for when the ancient lanterns fail. “Look here. See this candle?” Bae nods, tearfully, and Rumpelstiltskin forces himself to smile. “It’s magic. All candles are.”

Bae sniffles, but watches, intrigued, as Rumpelstiltskin finds a small tinderbox and lights the wick. “What does it do?”

“It keeps out bad dreams. There are lots of things that do that, but candles are the best, if you can find one. Look,” he waves the candle a little bit in front of Bae’s face, drawing an odd, faintly mystical shape in front of the boy’s tearstained face as if he has the faintest clue about magic, before placing it on the rough-hewn table next to Bae’s head, and kissing the boy’s forehead. “Now, if you have bad dreams, the candle will snuff them out. You should sleep sound.”

“Thank you, papa,” Bae says softly, comforted by his father’s pretend spell, and slips back down under the blankets, snuggling close into Rumpelstiltskin’s arms before falling into a dreamless, blissful sleep.

—

Rumpelstiltskin hasn’t slept an untroubled night in a century: he doubts he ever will again.

There are many things the Dark One does softly and quietly to punish himself. He keeps the memory of his lost little boy close at all times, and remembers often that his absence is nothing but his own fault. He wears tight, uncomfortable clothes, and shuns the company of others, even those who could become friends, comfort in his loneliness. He paints himself the villain and loses himself to the darkness so convincingly that, most days, he cannot recognize his own face in the mirror.

To all the world he is towering and egomaniacal, obsessed with his own power, his own advancement, and the chaos that runs in his wake. In private, he cannot sleep without seeing a swirling green abyss, his father or his son beside him, dragging him in or holding back, either way falling away, either way leaving him alone.

In the dark and the quiet he is a poor, lame spinner, frightened of the same power he works every day to accumulate and to work into wonders and horrors both, and he has no one to light a candle, to kiss his forehead, to sing him to sleep. ( _It would do no good anyway, for no candle has the power to change the mind, no matter what a poor spinner might have told his young son a world away and three lifetimes ago_ ).

He lights the candle anyway, and wonders if Baelfire, wherever he is, still does the same when he has nightmares, and remembers his father before everything fell apart; the father who’d comforted him in the night, the father he’d loved and trusted.

—

Belle is tossing and turning again.

It physically hurts Rumpelstiltskin to see her like this: her dark hair clinging to her sweat-slick forehead, her face twisted in a grimace of pain and fear, her hands fisted in the bedclothes. ( _He has bad dreams, of course, but he has ever since he was a boy, and they’re as familiar and unremarkable as breath_ ). Belle remembers, body and soul, her entrapment in Regina’s castle and her mindless, dead enslavement in the asylum. Belle remembers torture and suffering and madness as recent history, as miseries only recently escaped. And no matter what Rumpelstiltskin does, no matter how comforting his stories or how tight his embrace, Belle suffers through the night.

“Belle,” he murmurs, as he does every night, shaking her slim shoulder (too slim, thin and bony, the body of a woman malnourished for too many years) to wake her. “Belle, wake up, it’s okay, you’re safe.”

Belle starts awake, and for a moment, brief and terrible, Rumpelstiltskin sees no recognition in her fearful eyes when she sees him. But then, as always, she relaxes into his arms, and sighs his name, and all is well.

“I’m sick of this,” she tells him, a while later when he’s calmed her and she’s settled in his arms again, exhausted but too afraid to sleep. “My mother used to tell me that nightmares were just shadows, and that it was foolish to think a shadow could hurt you. But no matter how bravely I go to sleep, I wake up screaming.”

“Bravery is a good trait to have,” Rumpelstiltskin tells her, thoughtfully, “but it’s also foolish to think that demons in your mind are any less powerful because they’re not physical. In fact, that can make them all the worse, because you can’t just run them through and have done with it.”

“What…” she starts, and then stops, as if afraid to speak. He stays tactfully quiet, hoping she’ll gather her considerable courage and finish her question. He doesn’t wait long. “What did you do, when your son was troubled? I can’t see you as the kind of man to tell his child to just be brave and let it pass.”

He scoffs then, remembering the strong, sweet, bold-hearted little boy he’d raised, the opposite of his weak, cowardly father. He’d never had to tell Bae to be brave: Bae had been braver than his father by far by the time he could walk.

But he had still been a child, and children were fearful by nature. More than once a storm or the sounds of the nearby war had brought Bae crawling into his bed, and he’d taken some small, paternal pride in being able to comfort him then, to protect him, and in how peacefully Bae had slept in his arms.

He too had had nightmares, though, their banishment had been the first thing Rumpelstiltskin had ever done with magic, long before he’d ever actually had any.

“I lit a candle,” he tells her, and waved a hand, a cloud of purple smoke curling about his palm before parting to reveal an elegant blue and gold column candle, lifted without payment from Granny’s gift shop, and scented lightly with sea air and sandalwood. “They’re magic,” he tells her, “they keep out bad dreams.”

Belle giggles, a snuffling thing, for she can see the Granny’s seal on the side, and he knows she’ll probably go and pay the old woman in the morning, for her warm, moral heart won’t abide even small, romantic crimes like petty midnight larceny.

He waves a hand, and lights the flame, placing it gently on her bedside table. “The bad dreams will be trapped in the flame, and die when it expires,” he tells her, spinning the same old, strange story he had his son such a very, very long time ago.

“Is that true?” she asks, thoughtfully, but there’s a warm little smile on her sweet red lips, and he thinks it doesn’t matter whether he lies or is honest now, so he chooses the latter.

“I honestly don’t know,” he tells her, “but it’s worked in the past. And even if not, it smells lovely, doesn’t it?”

She nods, and settles happily into his arms, “It does,” she leans around and presses her lips to his softly and sweetly, “thank you, Rumple.”

She sleeps peacefully after that, and Rumpelstiltskin thinks the candle does amazing work for a lump of lifeless flaming wax.

—

It’s a scenario Rumpelstiltskin recognizes with a heavy heart.

A dark-haired boy ( _older than Bae had been, but still a child, still small and frightened and in need of comfort_ ) curled under his sheets, tossing and turning, plagued by terrible nightmares. Henry stays the night only rarely, but some nights when he’s been working at the shop until closing, and when Emma has decided to spend the night with Hook and Regina is busy with her clandestine lover, Henry decides to accompany his older grandfather home for dinner and stay in their spare room.

Belle is, of course, delighted to have him. Rumpelstiltskin wonders if the thought of children of their own is crossing her mind yet, or if their marriage is still too fresh for her to have considered another change so fast. Rumpelstiltskin has to admit that that’s a conversation he’s willing to forestall under the circumstances. He doesn’t know if he’s ready to become a father again so soon after the loss of his first child. He doesn’t know if he would be any better at it this time than he was the first time around: he’s no stronger in his soul than he ever was, no less fearful of danger, and no less inclined to stifle and destroy any good that comes his way for fear of relaxing and losing what he loves.

On the other hand, a child with Belle’s eyes and thick, dark curls, and his smile and knack for mischief… the image isn’t unappealing, for all the terror that the thought inspires.

But she hasn’t mentioned children yet, and he certainly won’t be the first to broach the subject, treating Henry more like a nephew than a grandchild. She insists he call her ‘Belle’, and he continues to call her ‘grandma’ to make her laugh and chide him. Watching them smile and chatter and cook dinner together makes Rumpelstiltskin’s heart feel as close to full and whole as is ever possible in these darker, harder days, even with the ghost of a man who should be here too lingering over the scene.

He’d thought himself alone in feeling Bae’s presence everywhere when Belle and Henry are with him, but apparently he was wrong. Henry is whimpering under his breath, pleading for his father, begging for his life, and Rumpelstiltskin delays not a moment longer in rushing to his side.

“Hey, Henry, come on now,” he murmurs, shaking the boy’s shoulder and settling himself on the side of the bed, “wake up boy, come on.”

He’s done this too many times before, and three hundred years fall away into a matter of weeks, and he’s back in a hovel in a small, muddy village in the war-torn end of nowhere, his peasant clothes clinging to filthy skin, shaking another small, dark-haired boy awake from a nightmare. He wishes he’d brought Belle in with him. Rumpelstiltskin is too great a coward even to confront the kinder edges of the past.

“Dad?” Henry murmurs, confused, and Rumpelstiltskin’s shattered heart breaks all over again. He will never regret the vengeance he took on the woman who caused this, not for a single moment, no matter what consequences may come.

“No, no Henry,” Rumpelstiltskin says, softly, “It’s me, it’s your grandpa, wake up now, it was all a dream.”

“Grandpa Gold?” Henry blinks his eyes open, and sits up a little, trying to wake up, shaking off the cobwebs of whatever bad dream he’d been having. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

“I was up working,” Rumpelstiltskin assures him, for for all that Storybrooke’s modernity and normality are insubstantial and false, accounts still have to be done, rent still must be collected, business must continue as usual. Belle went to bed a while ago, and made him promise he’d be up by midnight. He was in the process of fulfilling that promise when he’d heard Henry moaning, and come in to check on the lad. “Don’t you worry about that.”

“Oh,” Henry nods, “Okay. Well I’m fine, Grandpa,” he says, and Rumpelstiltskin buys not a word of it, but knows Henry is now old enough to have fallen into the adult trap of not wanting to burden others with his pain, however deep it may be. Rumpelstiltskin, who lost both his father and his son in the course of a single year, can’t let Henry go on believing that his sorrow is something shameful to be hidden away. Belle doesn’t let Rumpelstiltskin keep it to himself, but he has a feeling that no one in Henry’s life - not Regina, whose possessiveness is legendary, nor Emma, desperate to move on from her dead lover at any cost, nor Snow and Charming, who’d had the sheer insensitive nerve to name their child after a man they’d barely known without asking anyone who’d loved him for permission - is willing to grant him room to grieve.

“No you’re not,” he says, bluntly, “you were moaning in your sleep.”

“I was having a nightmare,” Henry admits, sheepishly, “but it’s okay, I’m used to it. Mom says it’s part of life, and it’ll pass.”

“Which mother?” Rumpelstiltskin asks, curiously, and Henry shrugs.

“Regina. Emma doesn’t… I don’t tell her when this happens. I don’t want to make her think about it, because I know it upsets her.”

“You’re too nice a boy, Henry,” Rumpelstiltskin smiles, pretending as always not to know that Henry is using him for some end of Regina’s, and that he doesn’t notice when things have been moved, searched, rifled through in pursuit of some unknown - and doubtless inane - plan of his adoptive mother’s. “You’re just a child, you should tell your mother if you’re having a problem.”

“Why?” Henry frowns, “She can’t do anything about it, her magic’s not subtle enough, and Regina refuses to mess with my mind anymore, even if I ask her to.”

“And rightly so,” Rumpelstiltskin nods, for once agreeing with his former pupil’s parental decision, for all that the brief answer Henry apparently received is all but insulting in its callous simplicity. As if any child should be asked to just accept nightmares and cope with them alone. “And before you ask, I won’t steal your dreams with my magic, either. Dreams are messages from the back of your mind, they’re your brain trying to process things that happen to you, so you can continue with your life. Even bad dreams, about terrible things, are that.”

“I dream about my dad,” Henry admits, “I didn’t want to tell you either. I know… I know how hard you worked to find him again. It seems selfish to miss him so much when I barely knew him.”

“He loved you, Henry,” Rumpelstiltskin tells him, from the very bottom of his aching heart, “You know that. You’re allowed to miss those you love, who love you in return. Even if that love didn’t last as long as it should have.”

Henry nods, and Rumpelstiltskin is surprised to see tears rolling down the boy’s cheeks, for all that his hands hurry to wipe them away before they can be seen. “I’m sorry,” Henry breathes, “I’m sorry grandpa, I should go back to sleep.”

“No, no,” Rumpelstiltskin hurriedly shakes his head, and places a hand gently on Henry’s shoulder. “No, don’t apologise. I miss him too, you know. It… it’s good to know I’m not alone in that.”

“Mom misses him too,” Henry assures him, “Emma, I mean. She just doesn’t show it, because she doesn’t want to feel it.”

“That sounds like your mother,” Rumplestiltskin agrees, with a surprising stab of sympathy for her, and a small amount of fondness. Bae had loved her, too, more than anything except Henry, and it soothes some deep sense of betrayal to know that his feelings hadn’t been unreciprocated. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Henry says, after a moment, yawning, “No, I need to sleep. But… tomorrow? Could we talk tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Rumpelstiltskin nods, and on impulse leans forward and presses a soft, fond kiss to Henry’s forehead. “Sleep well, Henry.”

He rises to his feet, and turns to leave, only for a small voice to call through the darkness, “Grandpa?”

“Yes, Henry?” he asks, turning on his heel to face the boy again, and Henry’s eyes are open and vulnerable, full of trepidation, as he forces his final question out.

“Do you… do you have nightmares, too?”

“Every night,” Rumpelstiltskin sighs, “And your mother is right, they are a part of life. But that doesn’t mean you have to just accept them.”

“What do you do, then?” Henry asks, “To keep the worst away?”

“Belle… Belle helps chase them away,” Rumpelstiltskin says, thoughtfully, and then another memory, a string of memories, occurs to him, and he waves a hand over his palm, and summons a small candle, simple and green, scented lightly with pine, and grins, “And a candle.”

“A candle?” Henry frowns, confused, “Doesn’t the light keep you awake?”

“Oh, no,” Rumpelstiltskin shakes his head, “Candles on bedsides have magical properties,” he lies, and Henry’s eyes widen, believing every word as gospel, soaking up every ounce of magical knowledge real or imagined that he can, and what’s one helpful white lie to a desperate child, anyway? He steps forward again, and places the candle on the bedside table, and waves a hand to light it. “They capture the bad dreams, and destroy them come morning.”

“How did you find that out?” Henry asks, and Rumpelstiltskin sighs.

“I did this for your father,” he tells him, softly, “when he was a boy, and terrified of pirates coming to kill me and kidnap him in the night. It helped him to sleep, and now it will do the same for you.”

“Pirates?” Henry frowns, “I thought he didn’t meet Hook until he went to Neverland.”

“Oh, no,” Rumpelstiltskin mutters, and wonders how much it’s fair to tell, how much he can reveal without ruining the boy’s relationship with his would-be stepfather. But then, how terrible would it be to cast a little doubt? Nothing he had to say would be a lie, and if Killian Jones wasn’t about to believe any promise of redemption from his crocodile, then why should his own dirty laundry be kept secret? “Killian Jones crossed our path long before magic did. But that’s for tomorrow. For now, sleep well, and know this candle will keep you safe.”

“Thank you, grandpa,” Henry murmurs, settling back into his pillows, already slipping back into sleep, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Henry,” Rumpelsitltskin strokes the boy’s hair one last time, soothingly, and walks softly from the room, closing the door gently behind him.

—

Candles are powerful things on their own, but as most other innocuous traditions they become deadly in the hands of Rumpelstiltskin’s wife.

Henry returns home after a long and heartfelt talk with his grandfather, and Rumpelstiltskin feels a mix of relief at grief shared, and deep love for his grandchild, who is a far more intelligent, sensitive, and perceptive boy than his maternal lineage would seem to indicate. There’s so much of Bae in that boy that Rumpelstiltskin wants to both weep, and clutch Henry close to his chest and never let him go.

He does neither: he remains stoic, and allows Henry to leave, back out into the world and the rest of his family, without comment.

Belle watches him carefully for the rest of the day, and he wonders how much she overheard while apparently cataloguing their impressive collection of rare books, housed in his study. But she doesn’t mention anything, and Rumpelstiltskin doesn’t bring it up, so he assumes it’s one of those things she’ll sensitively not mention until he brings it up on his own.

He does, however, notice that Henry’s room has been cleaned, and the candle removed, by the time he returns from his trip to the shop. Belle has never been able to shake the habits of a maid, and he can’t say he minds fresh sheets and clean floors, so long as she does it happily and of her own volition.

“Do you need to work tonight?” she asks him, after dinner, and he nods regretfully.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Our accounts are still in need of some care, and I want our finances to be perfectly in order as soon as possible.”

And Belle, who doesn’t and can’t understand why he’s gradually putting their affairs in order, just shrugs, “If you say so, I won’t argue. Just come up at eleven, okay? Not before.”

She’s got a look on his face that he recognises, secretive and full of promise, as if she’s up to something wonderful, and he feels a little thrill of anticipation down his spine. “Why?” he asks, teasingly, knowing - hoping - she won’t tell him. And, true to form, she just smiles, and shrugs.

“You have work to do,” she says, sweetly, “I’d hate to drag you away early. Eleven and not before, promise?”

“Promise,” he says, as always baffled and delighted by his lovely little wife, and she grins, and kisses him lightly before walking away. “The deal is struck!” he calls after her, and she turns and winks saucily at him before rounding the corner into the kitchen, and leaving him breathless with anticipation.

The rest of the day passes slowly. Rumpelstiltskin opens the shop late, and Belle is at the library until six, so neither is home until it’s dark outside. Dinner is a warm, quiet affair, Belle having picked up a pair of hamburgers from Granny’s and Rumpelstiltskin electing to help her finish the pitcher of iced tea she made that morning. It’s a bit of a comfort tradition, when either of them knows the other is in need of some solace: burgers and iced tea, a reminder of their first dates together, when they were learning how to love each other in the real world.

At nine she heads upstairs, with a reminder not to follow for two more hours, and Rumpelstiltskin has never found it harder to focus on his accounts. His mind is assailed by ideas of what could await him upstairs: Belle in some delicious new lingerie he’s never seen before, perhaps, or waiting for him covered in some sweet confection he can spend an hour cleaning off her. Maybe she’ll have tied herself to the bedposts again, like she had a few weeks ago on their honeymoon, when they’d found the rope in the back of the shop that obeyed the command of anyone touching it, and thus could tie her and untie her at her word.

His cock was growing half-hard already at that thought, and he reached down and pressed the heel of his hand against himself to relieve some of the ache. It only made it worse: he couldn’t help but imagine Belle’s warm little hand on him, and all the little tricks and maneuvers she could employ to devastating effect.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the clock chimed eleven, and he padded upstairs to his bedroom and his wife.

The bedroom door creaks open, and the image that greets him is both more beautiful and less tawdry than anything his mind had concocted. The room is covered in candles - white, all of them, like the candles that had burned at their wedding - and the faint scent of white roses hangs in the air, the whole room lit with a soft, flickering, romantic glow. But it’s his wife, lying horizontally across the bed with her head propped on one hand, wrapped in a loosely-tied white silk robe and nothing else, is what truly captures his attention.

Belle is always beautiful, but the candlelight gives her porcelain skin a soft, luminescent glow as if the light radiates from within her, and Rumpelstiltskin can well believe it. She smiles warmly when she sees him, and answers his silent question with a shrug. “I found the candle in Henry’s room,” she tells him, “and I remembered how you lit one for me every night I stayed here after the curse broke. I wanted to do something nice for you,” she shrugs, “surprise?”

“It’s beautiful, Belle,” he tells her, sincerely, his eyes firmly set on her, and she blushes all over, ducking her head at his implied meaning. He shrugs out of his suit jacket and waistcoat and places them on the armchair by the window, thankfully free of candles. He rolls up his shirtsleeves and toes off his shoes, and sees how Belle’s eyes light on his forearms, her tongue darting out to wet her sweet lips.

At the mirth in his eyes, Belle flops back onto her back and huffs in faux indignation, “You’re always so heavily dressed,” she complains, “So it feels like you’re already naked when any of it comes off.”

“Duly noted,” he grins, and crosses to the bed, settling himself down beside her and running his hand gently down her cheek from her hairline to her jaw, marvelling at the new planes and shadows that appear in golden candlelight. He leans down to kiss her, his fingers firm on her jaw, and she responds enthusiastically, her little hands reaching up to thread into his hair and hold him close. Her hands always end up in his hair, and he wonders if she’s noticed that he knows that, and has started using a nicer shampoo as a consequence, because the feeling of her nails on his scalp is sheer heaven.

“Rumple,” she breathes, and he smiles against her lips, placing butterfly kisses to her skin without ever landing properly, deepening it like she wanted him to. He couldn’t get enough of his mouth; he doubted he ever would.

“Yes, Belle?” he responds in kind, his free hand drifting down her neck, tracing little patterns against her collarbone before slipping beneath the silk of her robe to cup her left breast.

“I love you,” she tells him, “so much.”

Rumpelstiltskin is undone, all thought of teasing lost as he grasps her close to him, his arm wrapped around her bare back under the robe, and she arches into him, her grip on his hair tightening with one hand, his shoulder with her other.

Gently, carefully, he maneuvers them around and up, so her head is against the white silk sheets ( _everything is white silk and gold candlelight, and it’s like their wedding night all over again, except this time he resolves not to leave her, because she’s beautiful and she loves him and it was hell to do so the first time_ ) and he can cover her body with his own. He kisses her again, and again, his fingers returning to her breast to gently tease the hardened tip until she cries out and shivers all over.

Her legs shift apart, and her hips wriggle hopefully against the sheets, and he obliges without a second thought, his hand drifting down over her sternum and her navel to her hips, and then between them, to cup her dampening core in his hand and tease her opening with two gentle fingers. She whimpers then, shifting restlessly, desperate for more sensation, and he rubs the little nub hidden within her curls gently, feeling the fluid in her folds increasing as she grew wetter, hotter under his hand, readier for him.

Finally, he slides two fingers deep into her body, and she keens, throwing her head back and pulling his hair with her hands, dragging him up for another deep, soul-branding kiss as his fingers move gently, slowly in and out of her. The sight of her like that, the silk robe both covering and exposing her sweet, soft little body, her neck arched in pleasure, her dark hair spread out over the white pillows, combined with the hot, wet pressure of her channel around his fingers, is enough to make him painfully hard, and he thinks he’ll go mad if he doesn’t get inside her soon.

“Please,” Belle breathes, “please, I love you Rumple…”

Incapable of denying her anything, Rumpelstiltskin rises up on his knees and unbuttons his shirt, throwing it down the bed to avoid the candles that cover the floor, and swiftly following it with his trousers and socks. Soon the only clothing left between them is her silk robe, which he hasn’t the heart to remove just yet.

Her whole body glows in the candlelight, and he hopes it will be as kind to his, for he doesn’t want to hurt her by extinguishing her painstakingly arranged candles for the sake of his insecurity. If his Belle wants candlelight, then candlelight she will have.

He takes himself in hand, and braces his body over her again, lying between her thighs and lining them up, so he can enter her in one smooth thrust. Her back arches, and she gasps in pleasure as he pauses for a moment, allowing her to adjust before sliding out and thrusting back in, setting up a slow, deep, gentle rhythm that feels more like rocking than fucking. His hand on her hip strays down to play with that sweet little bud that makes her cry out for him, and she shudders from head to toe in delight.

“I love you, Belle,” he breathes into her ear, and her hand pets his hair before moving to brace against his shoulders, her nails biting deliciously into his skin as he increases his pace a little, shifting his hips, and suddenly he seems to be hitting a place inside that Belle really, really likes, because she’s moaning and gasping with every thrust, and her knees rise up against his ribs on either side, so he can thrust ever deeper, harder, enough to drive her up and up with every new movement inside her.

“You’re so beautiful, my precious darling, my wife, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen…” She cries out at that, as his cock thrusts deep into her and his fingers pinch her bud, and she tosses her head, rendered speechless as she hangs on the very precipice of completion. He grits his teeth, so close himself that he can taste it, but he needs her to finish first, needs to watch her come undone before he can follow her, “Come for me, sweetheart, go on, please Belle, I want to see you come for me…”

Belle moans, long and deep and low in her throat, as her channel finally tightens around his cock and her hips buck and writhe against she sheets as she climaxes, hard, her nails scoring wonderful, deep red lines into his shoulders, marking him with her pleasure. With a low groan of relief and three more erratic, jerky thrusts Rumpelstiltskin follows her, spilling his seed deep inside her and biting down on her neck to muffle his wild cry of completion, soothing his mark a moment later with his lips and tongue, making Belle tremble and whimper with aftershock.

Finally, they both lie still, and he rolls over and off of her. Her robe is sticky with sweat between them, and she finally slips it from her shoulders and he conjures it and the rest of his clothing lazily to the laundry basket on the other side of the room.

He spoons up behind her, adoring the feel of her soft, bare skin against his own, and presses soft, soothing kisses to her shoulders as she sags bonelessly against him. “Why the candles?” he asks, at last, curiosity getting the best of him.

“I wanted to give you good dreams,” Belle replies, softly. “Candles keep out nightmares, but I wanted more than that for you. I wanted you to look at them and remember something good, and have good dreams afterward.”

“I love you,” he whispers, overwhelmed and unable to think of more to say than that one pure, simple, heartfelt truth.

“I love you too,” she smiles happily, and snuggles back against him, and they lie comfortably for a long time that way, bathed in candlelight and utterly content.


End file.
